


A Real Swinging Joint

by Rhinozilla



Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Gen, Post-Jak II, can be read as shippy or platonic, whatever floats your boat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 18:23:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17903225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinozilla/pseuds/Rhinozilla
Summary: By the time Daxter gets ownership of the Hip Hog, the bar is in pretty rough shape. So are Jak and Keira. Set some time before the end credit scene of Jak II.





	A Real Swinging Joint

Jak never had exactly gotten a straight answer as to how Daxter became the new owner of the Hip Hog…or what was left of it. As soon as they opened the front door, though, he got about all the answer he needed.

The Port had gotten its fair share of battle damage during the fight with the metalheads throughout Haven, and Krew’s old bar had not been an exception. The front of the establishment had some scorch marks and impact damage from crashing zoomers and stray gunfire, but all in all, that wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was that it looked like something had crashed into the roof at some point during the fight, sending rafters, drywall, and concrete showering into the main room, and exposing the entire interior to the outside elements.

And Haven was in day three of the heaviest rainfall that Jak could remember since Sandover.

As a result, the place was steeped in standing water, and all of the furniture was soggy and swollen. Looters had already been by and taken booze, artwork, and some of the smaller metalhead trophies. The power grid had been out for days after Kor’s defeat, so all of the food in the back fridge had gone bad. Combined with the damp air and warm snap moving through the area…the place smelled worse than it looked…and it looked bad.

“Wow,” Keira snorted, standing beside them with her arms folded, looking around slowly.

On Jak’s shoulder, however, Daxter was nearly vibrating. As soon as they were inside the front door, Daxter launched himself off Jak’s shoulder guard and onto the ruined metalhead mash game.

“And it’s all MINE!” He raised two fists and threw his head back in victory. He pointed a quick finger at Keira. “Don’t get jealous, sweet cheeks.”

“Believe me, I won’t,” Keira replied flatly.

Jak snickered and put his hands on his hips, looking around. “It’s certainly—“ Another chunk of ruined insulation fell out of the ceiling, landing with a disgusting plop into one of the buckets littering the floor in an attempt to catch leaking water, “—something, Dax.”

Tess came in last of their group, not as fazed by the carnage of the place. “What do you think, Daxie?”

Daxter hopped from the game to Keira’s shoulder, and, before Keira could smack him off, he transferred to Tess’s shoulder. She cheerfully carried him to the bar on the other side of the room.

“I think I got it DIRT CHEAP!” Daxter clambered onto the bar, using his foot to shove away some debris from the counter top. “Prime real estate in the least-on-fire part of town, and practically no one else put any bids on it. I know it looks rough now, but so did Jak when I busted him out of the pen!”

Jak gave him a sour look and shook his head, visually tracing the dripping water from the buckets on the floor up to the visible holes in the ceiling. He briefly wondered if they should have been wearing masks in here. If the place hadn’t been a huge health code violation under Krew, then it had to be now, in this condition.

“I’m just sayin’, I know how to clean things up and make ‘em pretty again,” Daxter was going on.

Tess laughed and moved around the bar. “And you’ve got me too. I worked undercover in here for years, learning all about this place. Krew had all sorts of smuggling spots and hidey holes that he used for black market weapons trading…You know there’s a bunker in the basement, right?”

“What?!” Daxter hollered. “This keeps getting better and better! Show me, show me!”

He scampered up onto Tess’s shoulder again, and she giggled as she led him into the back toward where Jak could only assume there was a secret elevator or something. He didn’t follow, instead opting to loiter near the bar counter.

“Y’know, I managed to live here for nearly three years without stepping foot in this place,” Keira muttered.

Jak grunted, kicking away some of the broken bottles littering the floor behind the bar so Daxter wouldn’t accidentally land on them later. Actually he had done a sneaky job so far of never touching the floor, always jumping from shoulder to shoulder instead. That was probably for the best until they actually found the floor under all this debris.

“Congratulations,” he mumbled under his breath and straightened up. “Don’t give him a hard time. He’s excited about this. Ashelin practically gifted the property to him.”

“As punishment?” Keira raised an eyebrow, making a show of stepping around a lump of mud in the middle of the room.

Jak frowned. “As thanks for helping out the city. We did do that, remember? Kor and the metalhead nest and the Precursor Stone? Sorry if it wasn’t up to your standards how we did it.”

Keira grimaced and looked away. Jak did the same.

An awkward beat of silence passed, interrupted only by the lazy drips of water from the busted ceiling.

Jak felt bad for snapping at her, then immediately got mad for feeling bad about it. They still hadn’t really made amends after their spat at the stadium, but bigger problems had put apologies on the backburner. Now, nearly a week after Kor’s defeat, and they had more or less just lapsed into speaking carefully around each other and, when that didn’t work, making passive aggressive remarks.

It was driving him crazy, and he could see it was driving her crazy too. Problem was, neither of them were stepping up to clear the air. Daxter had said that they were both too stubborn and prideful to just get it over with and make up. There was something comforting about being prickly with her though. Being angry and shutting her out was easy. It was all this other stuff that was going to be difficult, now that there weren’t any world-ending battles or missions to distract him.

Dammit, Daxter and Tess had been gone a long time.

There were two short knocks on the front door then, and they both seemed to deflate in relief. Even if it was an enemy, it was at least something to break the tension.

Instead, it was Ashelin and Torn poking their heads in.

Maybe he would have preferred metalheads in this particular moment. Keira bristled a bit and muttered something about going to check on Daxter and Tess. Jak didn’t try to stop her as she left the room.

“Hey,” Jak greeted the two. “Well, this is…uh…Daxter’s new place.”

Ashelin cast a quick eye around the main room, scanning it with a mixture of disgust and amusement. “I know; he left about a thousand messages on my communicator, asking me to come down and see it…We probably should have worn hazmat suits.”

Torn’s face was stone, looking more like he’d been dragged here by Ashelin than someone who had any interest at all in seeing the establishment. He just grunted and eyed one of the light fixtures, which was hanging by a fraying cable from the ceiling. As if on cue, the final frays split, and the light fixture fell to the wet floor with a pathetic, metal clunk.

“Yeah,” he said, looking around at the ruined bar. “This seems about right.”

**Author's Note:**

> It has been raining for what feels like forever around here, so my grumpiness about the rain bled into this a little bit. Anyway, I'm not done playing in the Jak and Daxter sandbox yet, but I don't have the energy to write anything multi-chapter. So there's probably going to be more of these little oneshots for a while. Thanks for reading!


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